Become a designer

Follow in the footsteps of Spiel des Jahres 2017 nominee “Magic Maze” and the first Wallmart exclusive board game “Fog of Love”. Both games debuted at Fastaval, Denmark’s biggest game convention. Fastaval 2019 will once again showcase the most creative and innovative board games – and we want your game to be one of them!

Send us YOUR boardgame!

We want to provide Fastaval’s participants with a wide selection of games. Fastaval’s participants are a very diverse crowd, from roleplayers with little board game experience to hardcore eurogamers, from casual gamers to miniature gamers. We welcome all kinds of games, from social games to immersive narratives, creative party games, innovative eurogames, dexterity games and much more.

Why submit your game to Fastaval?

You get to have your game showcased at Fastaval and will be eligible to win the Otto awards for Best board game and most innovative board game. If you can’t attend, we will explain the rules to players and systematically gather feedback for you from the players and judges.

When your pitch has been accepted, we will help you make a design plan for your game and provide feedback throughout the design process. We have a network of specialist who can help you with everything from game design, balancing, interaction design, graphical design and production – depending on the needs of your specific game.

What we need

The name of the game

Your contact information (mail, phone and facebook-id) and adress

Your pitch

Feel free to add any other information you find relevant.

Put all the information into a single document, print it as a pdf, and name the file in the following format [Title] – [your name].pdf and send it to gamedesign@fastaval.dk.

The deadline for submitting pitches for games is Friday the 31st of August 23:59 Danish time (CEST/GMT+1).

To help you get started, we have collected our best Facebook links to groups for board game design and testing – and have set some dates for test nights on the calendar in Facebook’s largest Danish group for boardgame designers.

In addition to the Board Games Division, we have more local meetups around the country, where prototype events are regularly held, where you can get feedback on your ideas from other designers. Prototype events are scheduled for the following locations until the deadline for submission of pitches:

2018

July-August:

Towards the deadline on August 31st, there will be a number of opportunities to test and get response on your game. We host a number of events in Copenhagen, Århus, Odense and Ålborg – for more details, see here [Link til side med datoer og links til FBgrupper]]

We would really like to have seen your game live before the deadline if at all practical – it gives us a much clearer picture of what it is about.

The deadline is on Friday, August 31st at 23:59 Danish time (CEST/GMT+1).

September

As soon as we have received all the pitches, we start the proces of reading, debating and selecting the games we want for Fastaval. After one week, at the latest, we will be in touch to let you know if you are in or not. If your game is accepted, we will contact you in order to agree on a specific timeline for your game towards Easter and Fastaval. You will also be invited to our facebook group for all the designers, where there are rich possibilities for ongoing feedback and advice.

October

During October, at the latest, we expect your game to have been tested in a end-to-end play through test, the first draft of the rules to have been written, and you should have gotten some feedback.

November-December

More tests, feedback and development

2019

January

At this point the presentation of the game for the program and a poster/front for the game must be done

February

By now the final version of the rules must be done, so you have the last month and a half available for the productioon of the physical games themselves

March

Production of games

April

Fastaval!!

May-June

After Fastaval you will receive feedback from the judges on your game, along with a summary of the feedback forms we have given to the players to fill out after playing your game

The game design coordinators at Fastaval 2019

The coordinators’ task is to ensure the guests af Fastaval high quality boardgame experiences from a broad selection of board- and cardgames. We want to be an active partner in the design process through sparring and guidance, setting up sub-goals and deadlines, and in particular opportunities to get prototypes playtested continuously along the way. Our goal is to customize the design timeline to the individual game’s needs.

The coordinators also have the task of selecting this year’s field of designer board games from among the submitted pitches based on criteria such as potential, state of progress, theme and mechanics. The coordinators are not part of the jury who will judge the completed games at Fastaval, and select the Otto winners.

Max designs games for learning and organisational development for the agency Workz for a living. Max plays heavy eurogames with his friends, Pandemic with his wife and Kingdomino with his children. He likes games that provide complex decisions and a challenging progression with simple rules. He is actively training to keep his AP under control.

Max has made two board games for Fastaval, with 14 years in between, and has also written a number of role playing games for Fastaval.

Kåre Thorndahl Kjær

In order to afford going to Fastaval and similar nerdy things, Kåre works as an IT Project Manager. He is especially interested in board games that help players tell stories, where mechanics and themes are closely linked, or pushes the limits of what a board game is. His favorite games include Terraforming Mars, Secret Hitler and Pandemic Legacy.

Kåre has been designing boardgames for Fastaval for the previous three years and has played others since his first Fastaval in 2012.

Morten Lund

Works with User Xperience and Usability in software. He has a thing about chrome and complexity, elegant mechanics, strong themes and the unusual. He has a collection of really good war games that get way too little play time. Favorites from the game shelf includes High Frontier, Gloomhaven, Hammer of the Scots and Birds of Prey.

Morten has written a number of role playing games for Fastaval (the last time was in 2005), and designed boardgames on such diverse topics as computer shooting games, air traffic control and managing a racing team at Le Mans.

Tina Christensen

As scientific adviser for the Danish government, Tina travels the world trying to fix the overheating climate. Her board game collection, closing in on 200, is dominated by complex Eurogames, civilization/4X games and atmosphere-driven games like Fury of Dracula and Betrayal. Together with fellow friends in Among Meeples she has designed and published Colonies (2012) and Among Nobles (2015). The release of the latter was assisted by the nice reception of the game (then named Heirs) at Fastaval. Last year she co-designed a game for Fastaval.